(Part Two)
A wreck of a Viper hung in the cradle above the maintenance bay. Negus looked up at it in distant wonder and shook his head thoughtfully.
"One doesn't realise," he said. "We hear on the IFB about what you people do, but without a basis for comparison it means very little. To see something like that it brings the reality home with something of a shock."
A shadow crossed Apollo's face. "It was a conscious decision on the part of the Council."
"To underplay the hazards involved?"
"To cushion our people against a full understanding of the situation we're in. They thought to do otherwise would create a mood of despair, fear, panic a case of ignorance being bliss."
"Perhaps they have a point." Negus glanced at the captain. "You disagree?"
"I don't think you gain anything by dishonesty. Instead we have apathy, even hostility. The people take us for granted, assume that we'll always be there, always be able to protect them, and they resent us when we fail them. I think they forget that we're only human too." He sighed. "We exist to serve, I know, and to protect; but I know what my warriors go through out there, and sometimes it makes me angry " He shook the thought away. "Never mind. That's just the way it is, that's what we have to live with."
The other man looked up again at the Viper's mangled landing gear. "Did the pilot survive?"
"He survived," Apollo said grimly. "That's my ship." He walked on quickly before the big man could react, and knocked on the door of the maintenance supply room. "Bard?"
The technician opened the door. Seeing Apollo he smiled tiredly, the emptiness behind his eyes momentarily reforming into the shadow of a memory of something more.
"Always in a hurry, warrior. I know my team's good, but even we couldn't fix your Viper this fast not after what you did to it."
"Did I say a word?" Apollo protested. "In any case, that's not why I'm here. I brought a friend to see you."
Bard's face tightened and he stepped back a pace. "A friend? Warrior, I don't "
Apollo put out a hand to stop him. "Don't. Don't jump to conclusions, don't speak too soon." He stepped away as Negus caught up with him. "I said, a friend."
The big man said quietly, "Bard."
The technician's eyes flew to Negus's face, grew huge and dark with disbelief. His lips formed the other man's name, but no sound came.
Negus took a slow step forward, his hands held out; another. He said again, "Bard?"
Bard stood still, his body frozen into effigy, his face blank, expressionless. He might have died in that instant; only the trembling of his hands betrayed him. For a micron nobody moved, barely breathed, the tension in the air almost visible.
Oh, gods, Apollo thought, please let me have done the right thing!
The silence seemed to stretch out for centars, days, an eternity.
Suddenly the singer's throat loosened, strangling on a sob; he tore away from his stillness, flung himself into the big man's arms, and buried his face against his friend's shoulder. "Negus?!"
Still standing in the doorway, Apollo watched as Negus held the other man protectively, the singer seeming frail as a child against the massive chest. The big man glanced back for a micron, sparing Apollo a reassuring smile, and his lips moved soundlessly: he'll be okay now.
Apollo nodded understanding and relief, and turned away, leaving the other two to their reunion. The door closed behind him and he leaned back against it, untensing piece by piece. He realised for the first time, surprised, that his own hands were trembling as badly as Bard's. He spread them out before himself, watching as they slowly steadied, stilled. He had not realised quite how much this meeting had meant to him, how anxious he had been, and he wondered at it, gradually realising something he had not seen before: that Bard had become more to him than a onetime idol, more than a passing acquaintance. The man had become a friend, and a close one a closeness that neither of them had ever intended, deep and binding.
Soulmates, Apollo thought wryly, remembering how in his younger, more sentimental days he had often listened to Bard's lyrics and heard them as reflections of his own innermost thoughts and beliefs. That was a part of the poet's art, he knew that now; but still he heard the echoes.
Echoes
There were voices echoing a little way off, a confused babble of them, both adults' and children's. An instructional outing, Apollo guessed. He pulled himself upright and drifted over to join the group.
"Captain Apollo." Siress Alyssa was in charge of the visit; as the Council of the Twelve's newly appointed Education Prime, she took her responsibilities deeply to heart, spending as much time in the fleet's many makeshift classrooms as she did in the Council Chamber. She greeted him warmly and, he thought, with a hint of relief.
"Siress." He looked around the small band of the Galactica's children, greeting them by name. "Idris, Loma, Pyrrha isn't Boxey with you?" he asked the Siress, who cast her eyes significantly heavenward and looked back over her shoulder.
"Boxey!" she yelled. "Anansi will you keep up?!" The habitual calm of her voice was noticeably frayed around the edges, and Apollo suppressed a smile. Evidently the Education Prime had as much trouble coping with the two liveliest children in the class as any other instructor himself included.
He said gravely, "I apologise for my son, Siress."
"So you should," Siress Alyssa said darkly; but her face had set too firmly into lines of good humour over the yahrens, and there was laughter in her eyes now. The Council was improving slowly, Apollo reflected, gradually becoming more approachable, more human, as they came to terms with the situation in which they and the people of the fleet now all must live and abandoned their petty power politics. His sister insisted it was due to the number of women who had been elected Councillors recently which, he thought, might not be far wrong; after all, the Council which had so disastrously voted in favour of the peace treaty with the Cylons had been the first one in a millennium to be one hundred percent male.
Boxey ran up at that moment, his small partner in crime in hot pursuit, and launched himself bodily at his father. "Dad!"
Apollo staggered, regained his balance and his breath, if not his dignity, and gave his son the hug he was demanding. "I just saw you this morning, Boxey, not a secton ago calm down. What've you and Anansi been doing?"
"Just looking," Boxey said unconvincingly, and slid out of Apollo's arms. Anansi clamoured to take his place; Apollo scooped the tiny girl up automatically, and she clung to him, crawlon-like.
"Just looking, huh?" he asked the child, who was immediately stricken by coyness, hid behind her hair and refused to answer.
"And talking to some of the ground techs," Boxey added. "That was all honest."
"Uh-huh." Apollo was unconvinced, but had no doubt but that the truth would come to light eventually whether sooner or later would depend on how bad it was. "it'd better have been," he added severely. "Junior warriors behave themselves in class or else."
"Or else what?" Boxey wanted to know.
"Or else they don't get to grow up into senior warriors," Apollo told him. He steered Boxey gently back to Siress Alyssa's side, and set Anansi down beside her. "Run along now. Try and stand still long enough to learn something, huh?"
Boxey gave him a gap-toothed and deceptively angelic grin. Apollo looked at him suspiciously, wondering what his son had really been up to this time.
"Brave lady, Siress," he commented.
The Siress's expression blended forbearance with martyrdom. "Aren't I, though?" she agreed, and began herding her charges on. "Come along, children just you wait 'til the next parents' meeting, Captain "
Apollo laughed, and stood back to let them pass. Boxey and Anansi walked backward for some way, waving, until firmly instructed to turn around. Apollo dutifully waved back, hoping devoutly that no-one was watching him.
Footsteps rang behind him and he hurriedly let his hand drop. As the last stragglers in the line of children were lost to view around a corner, he turned away and found Bard waiting quietly at his side.
"Apollo?" The man reached out tentatively; the tips of his fingers just brushed the warrior's arm. "I don't know what to say "
It was the first time he had called the other man by his name; the first time he had ever touched him. Score two for the human race, Apollo thought. Aloud he only said, "Dont say anything. There's no need." He looked at Bard closely, trying to gauge the man's reactions. The only one immediately evident was shock. "You okay?"
Bard tried to laugh. "Ask me again when I know. I'm okay. Just well, confused, I guess. It's you get used to things, to them always being one way, and when they change even when it's for the good, even then, for a while you can't believe it, you can't quite be sure that it's for real I knew Negus was dead, they all were, I knew there was no way they could have gotten away and now now I don't know what I know any more. Everything's turned upside down, inside out I don't know whether I'm dreaming, or whether I just woke up. Maybe both." He shook his head distractedly, pushing the hair back from his forehead. "I was the one who was good with words. You'd never know it now. I don't know what I'm saying " With a sudden change of subject he asked, "Was that your kid just then?"
"M'm." Apollo nodded.
"I didn't know you had family of your own." Bard laughed again, shakily. "Apollo, all these sectars I've known you, I don't know anything about you, man."
"There's just the two of us," Apollo said. "My wife died." It was true, they had never talked of their families, their backgrounds, their upbringings; all that lay in the past, and the past was dangerous ground. "It cuts both ways, Bard."
"I know. I guess neither of us likes to remember too much."
There was a silence. For a moment Apollo thought that that was all the other man would say. Don't expect too much too soon, he told himself silently, but nevertheless felt a sense of abandonment, disappointment that he had failed to gain sufficient trust for this. Then Bard said quietly, "I had a son, once back before "
Apollo only looked at him. There was, after all, nothing to say; no balm could heal that hurt, no words could bridge the sudden distance between them. For all his grievous losses, he had been spared that ultimate, most devastating one; he still had his son. Finally, futilely, "I'm sorry," he offered. "It must be difficult "
Anything else Apollo might have found to say was interrupted by the arrival of the senior technician on duty, bearing down on him in a manner painfully reminiscent of a Cylon raider closing in for the kill.
"Captain - !"
Apollo shut his eyes. "I don't even have to guess what this is about," he murmured, and opened them again to face the inevitable. "Chief Ishmael?" he asked innocently. Even to himself he sounded wholly unconvincing. "Is there a problem?"
"There's a problem, Captain," the technician said ominously. "Your problem. That child of yours - "
Apollo sighed, deeply, familiarly, and with feeling, and turned to Bard. "I'd better go sort this out," he said apologetically. "I'll see you." He moved away, following the technician. "Well?" he asked, resigned to hearing the worst, "What's Boxey done now?"
If he had looked back, he would have seen Bard staring after him, and the look in his friend's eyes would have caused his heart to sink. But Apollo had long ago learned never to look back, and he did not do so now.
Boxey and his companion, the Captain was sternly informed, had somehow persuaded an over-gullible junior technician into letting them take one of the Viper simulators through a low-status training run.
"That's not so bad," Apollo suggested hopefully. "At least they can't hurt themselves, and there's not much in a simulator to break "
Chief Ishmael was not appeased. "They left it," he said implacably, "with its controls set on turbo. The cadet who used it next had quite a surprise."
Apollo just managed not to laugh, which would have been irredeemably tactless. Instead, carefully, he said, "Yes " He controlled the slight tremor in his voice, and said again, "Yes. Yes. I expect they did."
The technician looked at him suspiciously. "This is a serious matter, Captain. Of course you understand that."
"Yes," Apollo agreed hastily. "Of course it is I do." He made a show of glancing at his chrono. "You'll have to excuse me, Chief I have some reports to write up, and it's getting late. I'll speak to Boxey tonight, okay?"
"Be sure that you do!" the technician called after him.
Apollo made his escape with a sense of relief, grateful for the fact that he had decided not to bother with the period of sick furlon he was theoretically due. Right at that centon he would have been glad to take the longest, deepest patrol going, if he and his Viper had only been on active status. As it was, his office with its ever-hungry computer link and stacks of outstanding datawork had never before looked so welcoming.
By the time Apollo had worked through as many files as was humanly possible in the space of one duty shift, and had stopped off at the commissary for what he realised, faintly surprised, was the only meal he had had that day, it was well into Boxey's sleep period. Which, he calculated, checking his chrono, meant that his son might have just about got as far as stacking his toys away.
He keyed open the outer door to his quarters to find the room in a state of chaos that reminded him of the aftermath of one of Blue Squadron's better parties. He always says he wants to be a warrior when he grows up, he thought. Maybe he's getting into practice
"What've you done with him?" he asked Galina, his perpetually harassed childminder, who was standing amidst the wreckage looking around herself hopelessly. Boxey, predictably, was nowhere to be seen. "If you've strangled him, I'll give you an alibi."
Galina laughed. "Don't tempt me. He's been painting." She held up a sheet of many-times-recycled paper for Apollo to admire his son's handiwork. "Some of it went on the page. The rest is currently under the turbospray, hopefully being washed off your son."
The Captain took the painting from her, a slight frown creasing his forehead as he registered the subject. "I wish he'd draw something else "
The drawing was mature for a child of Boxey's age, depicting a perfectly recognisable Caprican landscape: a house set in a field, trees, flowers, a sleeping daggit, the sun bright in the sky and red and orange slashes across it all, a child's memory of the laser fire that had come from nowhere between one micron and the next and had destroyed tranquillity and harmony forever.
"Should he keep on going back to it this way, keep dwelling on it?" Apollo looked down at the woman, seeking some kind of reassurance. "Shouldn't it have faded by now?"
She straightened, her hands full of half-read booktapes, and met his eyes steadily. "Has it for you?" she asked simply. She moved away from him and started stacking the tapes on a shelf. "Boxey wasn't much more than a baby when it happened; there was no way he could understand what was going on. You told me how badly disturbed he was after. I'd say that this was his way of dealing with the memories. He doesn't have the nightmares any more, does he?"
"No," Apollo admitted. I do, he thought; but that he did not admit.
"Let well enough be, then. It's probably going more good than harm."
"'Probably'?"
She came back to him, said gently, "Hey " and touched his hand. "I'm only an unemployed actor, remember? Not a child psychiatrist. Just because I like kids doesn't make me any kind of expert I can only tell you what I think, for whatever that's worth. Okay?"
Apollo let his fingers curl around hers for a micron. "Okay. I'm sorry."
She didn't take her hand away. "I know how it is. Don't worry."
"I guess that's what parents are for to worry."
He's all I have, you see.
The sudden twist of emotion blinded him for an instant. Hiding it, he turned away toward the turbocubicle. "He's taking his time." He turned the handle and opened the door.
Boxey looked up at him and smiled brightly. "Hi, Dad. It's Muffit's turn now."
Muffit gave a heartfelt mechanical whine. Its circuits were proof against the turbowash particle, but no daggit, whether animal or drone, had ever taken kindly to being bathed, and Muffit was not about to be the first exception.
"Never mind about Muffit," Apollo told his son, and crouched down next to him. "Did you have your turn?" He took Boxey's hands in his and scrutinised them for lingering traces of paint.
"Of course I did!" Boxey said, his tone as injured as if he had never tried to avoid a turbowash in his life. "Galina told me, and I always do what Galina says. I like Galina," he went on, submitting to having his sleepsuit fastened for him. "Galina's my best friend."
"Whatever brought this on?" Galina wondered, looking around the edge of the door.
"Who knows?" Apollo sat back on his heels and regarded his son carefully. "Could it be something to do with someone not a million metrons away sneaking a ride on a Viper mock-up and knowing they're in trouble?"
"You okay, Muffit?" Boxey asked irrelevantly, ignoring his father.
"Surely not," Galina murmured. She waved Boxey a heartless farewell. "See you tomorrow, kid. For tonight you're on your own."
"Some friend you are," Apollo said accusingly, and went with her to the door. "If I ever need a Protector, I'll know not to come to you."
"For you," she said serenely, "I might consider perjury." At the startled look in his eyes, she smiled. "You pay my salary, after all."
His face relaxed. "So I do," he agreed. "Goodnight, Galina. Thanks for everything."
"You're welcome," she said. She opened the door, made to step out, then started back. "Oh! Oh, I'm sorry!"
The person standing outside apologised in the same instant. "I'm sorry I didn't mean to startle you "
Galina recovered herself, and stepped back out into the corridor. "That's okay, it keeps the reflexes in practice always good training. 'Bye," she said, and was gone. Apollo was left staring at his unexpected visitor in sheer, blank astonishment.
"Bard?"
The other man managed a quick, tight smile, but his discomfort was clearly visible. "Yeah. Can I come in?"
Apollo stood back to let him pass, followed him inside. "I never thought to see you here thought we'd never get you out of Maintenance. Something wrong?"
"Matter of definition. Not wrong, exactly. Weird, maybe."
"You want a drink?"
"Need, mostly."
"That's good enough for me." He fetched the carafe and a pair of glasses from the locker in his sleeping chamber and poured for them both. "Sit down, will you? I won't be a micron." He went back into the turbocubicle. "Boxey, are you ready for bed, or what?"
"I haven't had my story yet," Boxey objected. "And you were going to yell at me."
"I was not going to yell at you!" his father said, much wounded. "We were going to have a reasonable discussion. Are going to. Tomorrow."
"I won't be able to sleep if I'm worrying about it," Boxey warned him. "I might even have another nightmare."
His father pounced mercilessly upon this flawed logic. "You won't have a nightmare if you can't get to sleep," he pointed out. "Come on, monster." He bent down to his son and lifted him in his arms. Boxey wrapped his arms and legs around him tightly.
"You're not mad at me?"
Apollo hesitated, recalling the educational trips of his own childhood, not so very long before: how the instructors had always hurried past whatever he most wanted to see and lingered forever over what interested him least; their endless, needless nagging: keep in line, pay attention, don't touch anything Remembering, he could hardly help but sympathise. But back then he had been a child. Now he was an adult, a parent, and words like 'responsibility' and 'duty' and 'good example' kept nudging at the borders of his conscience.
"Not much," he finally said. "Not so long as you take care and don't hurt yourself, or anyone else or break anything. That's the most important thing. But you should mind Siress Alyssa when you're with her. If you'd got into any trouble, how do you think she'd have felt, huh? And Chief Tech Ishmael was mad, and I don't suppose the cadet who took the next simulation was very happy, either did you know you'd left it on turbo?" Boxey, who had been looking suitably contrite, started to giggle irrepressibly. Apollo sighed. "Okay, yes, very funny. And I don't want you to go leading Anansi into mischief, either she's younger than you are, you should take care of her."
Boxey yawned. "You don't know Anansi very much, do you, Dad?" he looked over his father's shoulder. "C'mon, Muffit.
The drone pulled itself out of the turbowash, yapped irritably a couple of times, and waddled after its owners, through the outer room into the sleeping quarters. Bard, settled in the depths of one of the seating units, looked up as the small procession went by, watching expressionlessly.
In spite of his best efforts, Boxey was asleep almost before his father had pulled the quilt over him. Apollo waited for a few microns, watching to see the child settled before rejoining his visitor.
"I'm sorry about that. He should have been in sleep period a centar ago, but he has a mind of his own." He settled himself on a seating unit across from the other man, reached out to take up his glass. "Bard, what brings you here?"
For a moment the singer made no answer. Finally, obliquely, he asked, "Isn't it hard, bringing up a kid on a ship like this in a time like this?"
Apollo leaned back and considered. "I suppose it is," he said, surprisedly. "But I'm so used to it now, I don't even think about it. Boxey's a part of my life a part of myself." His fingers closed around the bowl of the glass as he thought, remembered. "Just after my wife died then it was hard. We were both adjusting, Boxey and I, getting to know each other " He looked up. "I don't think I explained sometimes I almost forget he's adopted; I married his mother. I told you, my wife died. There were times back then when I didn't think I could cope. I'd lost " He drew breath, let it go. "A lot. Now I was losing my freedom as well, suddenly becoming responsible for another person, another life " He hesitated, frowned, tried to explain. "In a way I was accustomed to that, being who I am and doing what I do, but this was different. I'm responsible for my warriors, they need me to lead them at least, I like to think so but they can get by without me. Boxey Boxey's a child, and he depended on me for everything. He reminded me of her, too, and sometimes that was more than I could bear. And I didn't know what kind of a parent I'd make, whether I'd even be there for him for long. Being a warrior means well, you know what it means. When you go out, there's never any guarantee you'll make it back. I even thought of letting him go, giving him up for some other couple to raise civilians, I mean, someone who could give him security and order and safety "
"You changed your mind?"
"I never really made it up. It seemed the easy option, but it wasn't what I wanted, it wasnt what Boxey wanted, it wasn't what Serina would have wanted, what she'd asked of me. And whatever I'd lost, it was nothing to what Boxey had. He needed me, needed someone familiar, someone he knew cared for him, wanted him loved him. He needed that, not to be passed on to some stranger like a piece of secondhand merchandise. And, when it comes down to it, where is there in the fleet that's safe? We've lost civilians before. Anyone can die in a raid - and at least I have the comfort of knowing that the Galactica's the best defended ship we have. Boxey's as safe here as anywhere. Galina that's the woman you met just now Galina takes care of him for me when I'm working, when he's not in instruction. That's another thing."
"What is?"
"That I can afford a childminder, and to have a monitor system set up so that I can leave him at night and not worry about him waking with no-one there his drone's programmed as a watchdaggit, but I don't like to rely on it too much." His eyes flickered to the emptiness beyond the viewport and his mouth twisted wryly. "There's not much else to spend my pay vouchers on, after all."
"Rank has its privileges," Bard observed, "like they say."
Apollo admitted it. "Boxey is a privileged child. It's difficult for me to accept. I despise the privilege system, I hate the fact that it even exists, but at the same time I want the best for my son. So what can I do?"
Bard shrugged. "Compromise."
"Perpetually." The glasses were empty; Apollo refilled them, waiting.
"I guess I owe you an explanation," the singer said slowly. "See, something happened something strange." His fleeting smile came and went. "This is one of those days; just one thing after another. First Negus, then " He let the sentence hang, reached for his glass.
Apollo waited again. Finally Bard said, "The child I saw you with today, the one I asked if it was your kid I meant the little girl. I didn't notice you with the boy."
"Anansi?" Apollo said. "Lords, no!" He was smiling; Bard looked a question. "Yes, I know she looks like an angel in miniature, but popular opinion has it that she's actually a Cylon in disguise. Boxey's a handful, but compared to his cousin " 'Cousin' was a convenient term; Anansi's parents had both been warriors in Apollo's wing, both killed in one protracted, horror-filled battle, and Athena had adopted the child in order to keep her in her familiar surroundings aboard the Galactica. "No, Boxey's my son "
"Adopted," Bard reminded him gently. "I told you it was strange, Apollo, and I don't suppose he'll remember, but I've met your son before." He lifted his head to look into Apollo's still face. "You and I, we have a lot in common: the way we look at things, the way we feel. And something else, too "
Apollo knew what had to be coming. Soulmates? he thought ironically and, aloud, asked needlessly, "You knew Serina?"
"Yahrens ago." Bard qualified the fact quickly. "Long before any of this even before she was famous. Even before I was famous." He looked at Apollo again, his expression uncertain. "Do you wish I hadn't told you?"
Apollo shifted his shoulders aimlessly, unsure himself of the answer. "No. Yes I don't know. Of course, she knew a lot of people before she met me, had other friends, other lovers So did I we were both adults, how else would it be? It's just I suppose I never expected to meet one." He drained his glass again, again refilled both it and Bard's. "No, of course I'm glad you told me. Once you realised "
"Once I'd realised, anything else would've been dishonest," Bard finished. "And I owe you better than that." He hesitated. "We stayed friends. I still used to drop by to see her, even after it was over between us used to make sure she got tickets for the Caprica City concerts, and backstage passes "
"Backstage passes?" Apollo blinked. "I do believe I'm jealous." His mouth twitched. "I loved my wife " Had he stressed that too strongly? My wife? "But I just can't picture her as a believer."
"No?" Bard said. "Ah, but you're wrong. She was a true believer. She believed in me just when I needed it the most, and I'll always owe her for that. I wrote Moonsilver for her, and Shelter From the Storm, and Winds of Change after she left me; she was with me when I wrote Heartland "
"You're talking my history," Apollo said, for the sake of saying something. "Winds of Change I remember a fight I had with my girl and Heartland, that was the one that first made the rest of the worlds sit up and listen to what we believers had been telling them for yahrens."
"You make me feel old," Bard said. "That was still yahrens ago."
Yahrens ago: yes. How many? Ten, fifteen more? Apollo felt his heart turn over painfully in his chest; he closed his eyes. Thank god for that! Then his eyes opened again and he wondered, with a kind of horror, am I jealous? Just what am I afraid of?
But he knew the answer to that. He was afraid of a ghost: the ghost of a man he had never met, a man whose name he didn't even know. He had said to her, When you're ready, you'll tell me. But she had never been ready, had never told him; and now it was too late, he would never know, and the fear was of the unknown of the unknown, forgotten, lost, reappearing and demanding as its right what it had long ago abandoned, what he had long since come to think of as his own.
How many girls were there, besides Marta? Serina was as old as I; there must have been at least as many men.
Did that increase the chances of that one particular one reappearing, or did it lessen them? One of Serina's past lovers had survived the destruction; what were the odds against another having also done so?
God, listen to me! I'm wishing some man, some human, dead, just because
Bard was speaking again. "I don't know if he'll remember me." No demands, no assertion of a father's rights. "My career really took off about the time he must have been born how old is he? Eight yahrens? and I only saw Serina a few more times after that. But I'd like to see him if you don't mind." The musician's hands, the strong, square fingers, were stretched out before him, his eyes fixed on them. "He's all that's left of her now. I'd like to look into his eyes, see his mother through him." He looked up. "I loved her, Apollo. I couldn't hold her, but I loved her. And sometimes memories aren't enough. You know that."
Apollo bowed his head, unable to withstand the wordless plea in the man's eyes that were dull and uncaring no longer; unable to deny a truth that he had shared.
Now, I'm not a hero, I know it's true
But everything I am, it all depends on you
He thought, Serina. He had never wondered who the song might have been written for; he only knew that he had lived it.
Oh, lover,
Don't walk away, don't leave me standing here alone
Don't dazzle your eyes with the glittering lies
The broken promises of the unknown
But she had: had left him, as she had left Bard also, though not in the same way; had left him to try to live his life alone, almost to fail. Had it been easier for Bard? He, at least, had had the release of his music, perhaps even the belief, or at least the hope, that his loss might not be forever. For himself there had been no hope and no release, only the rigid bounds of duty at least, in the beginning. Love, the shared and reciprocated love of his son, had come later, a slow but unstoppable, inevitable growth.
"I know," he said at last, quietly. "I understand. I'll bring him with me, if I can, the next time I'm down in the bay." He grinned suddenly, the shadow passed. "I warn you, once you get him down there, you may not be able to get rid of his again."
The other man smiled too. "I won't mind," he said. "It'll liven the place up."
"That," Apollo said, with feeling, "it certainly will." He refilled the glasses again, tipping the carafe upside-down to drain the last of the vignon. "You'll see. Here."
Bard took the glass from him. "I told you it was a strange day. Negus; Boxey two parts of my life, two things that I'd thought were lost forever."
"All the rules say there ought to be a third."
"There is."
Apollo looked at him, waiting. The singer stood abruptly, pushing himself restlessly up out of his seat, and walked to the viewport. One of Boxey's paintings was stuck to the bulkhead beside it. He stood back, regarding it thoughtfully.
"Laser fire," he said quietly. "After all this time it went that deep." He fell silent, gazing outward to the stars. After a few centons Apollo moved to join him.
"Three things," he said. "The third?"
Bard turned to him, his eyes dark and starfilled. "The third," he said. "Myself."
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